The present invention relates to coin operated devices for vending snack food items, and more particularly, to small manually driven vending machines.
Small offices such as banks, real estate companies and law firms typically do not have any snack food service if they have fewer than eighty employees. Snack food vending machines are usually large vertical cabinets housing complicated electro-mechanical dispensing mechanisms. Many small offices do not have sufficient space for large vending machines. Even if they have the extra space, the monthly dollar volume of snacks purchased by the relatively low number of employees in a small office does not justify the placement of a large vending machine. This is because such machines cost between two and three thousand dollars apiece.
Snack food service is sometimes provided to small offices through a so-called "honor box." This is an open cardboard tray supporting a small selection of pre-packaged chips, candy bars, cakes, sweet rolls and the like. Office workers can freely retrieve any of these snack food items from the tray and are "on their honor" to deposit sufficient coins in a rudimentary cash box to cover the posted price. Historically honor boxes have experienced a high rate of theft, i.e. 20-30%. They also do not provide protection against rodents.
During the past ten years a new class of counter-top vending machines has been developed. Their relatively small size permits them to be placed on a counter-top of an office kitchen. See for example U.S. Pat. No. 4,721,197 of Hoffman. Existing counter-top vending machines are bulky and heavy and are usually too costly to justify a route. The price of commercially available counter-top vending machines currently ranges between $300 and $1500. Service of most counter-top vending machines is limited to item-by-item re-stock at the office location, which is time consuming and disruptive to the office staff. Existing counter-top vending machines have multiple coin mechanisms which are not easy to re-coin when it is necessary to change the price of items being vended. Also their item selection mechanisms are difficult for a customer to use and are unreliable. For example, one small vending machine has a manually movable rod tipped with a pressure sensitive adhesive which is lowered until it sticks to the article selected. The rod is then raised and moved to an accessible location where the purchased article is grasped and removed by the customer.